Vanished VPN Review – Can You Trust a VPN from Australia?

VanishedVPN is an Australia-based VPN service that has only been around for just over a year. As such, they are fairly untested and haven’t exactly penetrated the marketplace the way that other VPN service providers have.

Their big claim to fame was a plug by Lifehacker who called them their “favourite VPN for accessing US Netflix.”

While a handful of companies live up to the hype, and more often than not, a majority of them don’t. VanishedVPN has been in the spotlight since this plug from Lifehacker. However, do they really deserve to be there?

What is VanishedVPN?

Advertised as being ideal for overseas shopping, online gaming, sports and streaming, VanishedVPN is a virtual private network solution out of Australia.

This doesn’t exactly bode well for us Aussies because Australia is a member of the Fourteen Eyes, a multinational cooperative who collect signal intelligence and share it with one another. This means that your sensitive data will never truly be safe, regardless of whether you are using a VPN or not.

The vast majority of reputable VPNs maintain a strict “no logs” policy which assures users that their sessions will not be recorded nor sold to third parties. VanishedVPN openly admits to saving your data for a period of 30 days. This includes your source IP address and your connection start and stop time. Read more about VPN logging here.

Although VanishedVPN claim to never log a user’s traffic or the content of said user’s communications, but is that really a claim they can make in good conscience?

Under the UKUSA Agreement and all related amendments, the Australian government can serve VPNs with subpoenas or search warrants, and that VPN would be obliged to share their users’ logs.

VanishedVPN’s essential function is as a geo-unblocking solution. Geo-blocking refers to sites blocking people in other countries from viewing restricted content. For Aussies eager to watch their favourite American TV shows, VanishedVPN seems to be a viable option.

With VanishedVPN, you’ll be able to catch up on the newest episodes of Game of Thrones and enjoy old faves like Dexter, Breaking Bad or the Netflix show Orange is the New Black. VanishedVPN is able to gain access to BBC iPlayer, ITV, Hulu, Crackle and other geo-blocked streaming services.

What’s the “True” Cost of VanishedVPN?

There are only two pricing options with VanishedVPN, neither of which seem all that impressive.

They offer a standard plan or their “best offer” plan (annual).

The Standard Plan

$11.99

Billed every month

3 simultaneous connections

“Best Offer” Plan

$8.33/month

Billed annually as $99.99

$43.89 in savings

3 simultaneous connections

Honestly, we’re not so keen on the Standard vs. Best Offer packages since we like to “pay as you go”, and we can’t really trust a VPN that doesn’t offer a money back guarantee or a free trial.

Even some of the worst VPNs around give you a minimum 3-day free trial so you can acquaint yourself with their service and tell if they’re legit.

Cancelling VanishedVPN Service

All users are able to cancel their service at any time, but it is important to bear in mind that no refunds are issued. Since VanishedVPN does not issue refunds, users who have purchased a yearly subscription will not be compensated for the portion of time left on their account.

The only way to get a refund on a yearly subscription plan is to cancel within the first 30 days of service. Cancellation goes into effect as soon as VanishedVPN is notified that you want to cancel.

Is VanishedVPN Safe?

VanishedVPN’s “Features” page appeared blank last time we used it. Therefore, there was no way for us to confirm that their service is a safe and secure one. Unlike virtually every other VPN available, they make no mention of their precise protocol or encryption.

Only a real drongo would feel like they could roam the web freely using a VPN that doesn’t disclose its method of cryptography. That’s a surefire way to get caught in yer grundies.

(Unfortunately) Their Geo-Blocking Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up to Be

It’s more than a bit bodgy for a site to bill itself as the VPN for US Netflix—only to deactivate a user’s account for streaming Netflix content. But that’s exactly what happened to us after we signed up with them.

In the interest of full disclosure, it must be stated that we really put this one up to the test by continually streaming for a period of 24 hours. We were also Torrenting which may seem suspect, but most VPNs that are good for streaming also allow P2P. Regardless, this just seems like false advertising.

The Pros of Using VanishedVPN

VanishedVPN’s marketing strategy is more than a little hokey. Anyone who advertises a miniature router as “The Amazing Invizbox” probably belongs working in the circus instead of in cyber. “The Amazing Invizbox“.

However…despite its ridiculous name, the “Invizbox” is actually one of the more appealing offerings on Vanished VPN’s site. This mini router enables users to connect their Smart TV, Playstation or Xbox to the VPN’s server.

Alas, the Invizbox was listed as being currently out of stock, so the potential pro has lived up to the site’s name and vanished right before our eyes after clicking on “Find Out More.”

About the only good thing we can say about VanishedVPN is that they are pretty informative in terms of configuration. They offer detailed setup guides for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Windows, Android, ATV, PS4, PS3, Sports, Chromecast, Surface, Routers and more.

VanishedVPN Speed Test

For the sake of ensuring the accuracy of this review, we decided to run a speed test using Speedtest.net on a 100 Mbps server in the AU. To put this in perspective, we were in Sydney at the time. So performance was not affected by rugged conditions or anything.

Here are the results of the test:

AU Server (Sydney)

Ping: 49 ms

Download Speed: 9.37 Mbps

Upload Speed: 0.47 Mbps

US Server (New York)

Ping: 140 ms

Download Speed: 29.74 Mbps

Upload Speed: 2.07 Mbps

It’s obvious from these findings that speed is not VanishedVPN’s strong suit. In fact, the speed appeared to have “vanished”. Nowhere on their website do they let potential customers know anything about their servers or protocol(s). They opted to go with the most opaque details. You might also say, it “vanished”.

Most VPNs pride themselves on listing their multitude of server locations. VanishedVPN doesn’t disclose any of this information.

Customer Support Quality

VanishedVPN does not offer 24/7 live chat like some of the better VPN solutions on the market. On the contrary, you are limited to an email only option for filing a complaint or asking any technical questions.

Their customer support team are knowledgeable enough, but this is nowhere near as great as services like NordVPNor Surfshark. Some sites rely only on a ticket system while others are there online to help you in real time. Sadly, VanishedVPN is not one of the latter.

How to Use VanishedVPN

If you’ve decided to go with VanishedVPN (then we are sorry), the signup/setup process is rather simple. You just register your account by providing your email address and creating a password. Once you’ve completed signup, their setup guides will walk you through the process of accessing their interface on a range of compatible devices.

For those using Windows, you will have to download the OpenVPN app and apply the VanishedVPN openVPN configuration files. This will take about five minutes.

From there, it’s really quite easy.

Download and install the OpenVPN software from openvpn.net. Make sure to allow the TAP drivers to install when you receive the pop-up later on during the installation.

Download the VanishedVPN OpenVPN config file from here for the Server that you want (i.e. usa.ovpn for the USA VPN to watch US Netflix).

Move the file that you downloaded (USA.ovpn in our example) to your OpenVPN config folder at (C:\Program Files\OpenVPN\config). Click continue when asked for administrator access to continue.

Right click on the OpenVPN GUI shortcut icon on your desktop, and choose ‘run as administrator’.

Right click on the OpenVPN icon in the taskbar at the bottom of your screen.

Select the connection that you want (USA in our example), and select ‘connect’ from the drop down menu.

Copy and paste your VPN username (your email address) and password that you can see on the ‘my account’ dashboard on our site. These are case sensitive.

The icon should turn green to show that you’re connected.

To test that you’re connected, try and play some content from the location that you are now connected to (for example if you are connected to USA, navigate to netflix.com and you should see the US catalogue).

You’re all set, mate!

Do We Recommend VanishedVPN?

VanishedVPN is far from the worst or most expensive VPN. In fact, many reviewers praise the price, even though we’ve seen much better offers elsewhere. As we have said, there’s not much to recommend this one.

There is a relative dearth of price options to this one. Many VPN sites offer free trials and 3-month packages. VanishedVPN only offers a monthly or annual billing plan, neither of which is particularly remarkable in terms of price point. There are certainly more affordable VPNs on the market, many of them with solid reputations and a track record of transparency.

By contrast, VanishedVPN provides minimal information on their practices and policies. But while the scarcity of advanced features is a drawback in this seasoned VPNer’s eyes, We can see how that might appeal to the less-experienced user who just wants the privacy and security of a VPN for casual surfing or intermittent streaming.

For all other users, we would strongly suggest that you opt for a more established and fully-featured services like NordVPN. If you want the cream of the crop, then you’re in luck. We’ve reviewed over 80 different VPNs situated across different parts of the globe and have filtered them down to the gold nuggets. Here are our top picks for the best VPNs.

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Steve 3/10
Speed : Slow
Usability : Easy To Use

February 22, 2019

Not that slow but privacy is definitely an issue

Overall Vanished is pretty easy to use. It’s not as slow as you guys advertised but it’s definitely not the VPN of choice if you value privacy. The writer of this article got it spot on when he/she mentioned that you shouldn’t trust any VPN that is domiciled in a country like Australia.

As one can imagine with the recent data privacy laws, Australian isn’t a place that values its citizens privacy.

Bob 1/10
Speed : Slow
Usability : Easy To Use

February 21, 2019

Not Worth It – slower than a snail

To be honest, it’s so slow that it’s basically not even usable. Would not recommend